Four years of construction looming on Route 18

Friday

Aug 11, 2017 at 3:30 PMSep 27, 2017 at 2:35 PM

At about the same time work wraps up on the new Fore River Bridge this fall, South Shore commuters will contend with another traffic nightmare: the widening of Route 18 from Abington to Weymouth. But look on the bright side. It should be finished by 2022.

Jessica Trufant The Patriot Ledger @JTrufant_Ledger

WEYMOUTH -- Factory Paint opened at the intersection of Pond and Main streets in 1949, and Kristen Laniewski, the store’s manager, said it seems like construction along the dense Route 18 corridor has been going on ever since.

“We’ve been here over 65 years, and we’ve been through many phases of Route 18 work,” she said, recalling when the intersection got its first set of traffic lights in the 1990s. “You can meet with (state transportation officials) many times, but you can’t predict how it’s going to go. How do you really prepare for it?”

As construction of the new Fore River Bridge wraps up this fall and North Weymouth gets a break from the resulting traffic, the vehicle backups will get a lot worse in South Weymouth as the state breaks ground for the long-awaited widening of Route 18.

A $57 million project to rebuild the road to carry two lanes of traffic in each direction from Highland Place in Weymouth to Route 139 in Abington is set to begin this fall.

Crews from Gioiso & Sons of Hyde Park and D&R General Contracting of Melrose will also rebuild four major intersections, replace a bridge over railroad tracks, install improved safety features and add bicycle lanes and sidewalks on both sides of the road. The projects requires the state to buy hundreds of strips of private land abutting Route 18 and bring the road closer to residents’ and businesses’ front doors.

Parts of the 4.1-mile stretch already have two lanes in each direction, like the section in front of South Shore Hospital. The project will address traffic congestion by getting rid of bottlenecks at points where the road goes from four lanes at major intersections back down to two – a problem that Patriot Ledger archives show dates back to at least the 1970s. The state first floated the concept of widening Route 18 from two to four lanes in 1974, but eventually dropped the plan after opposition from residents. In 1976, the cost was estimated at $3 million.

Instead, the state focused on minor work such as intersection improvements, but it vowed to leave Route 18 alone for major changes until the town came begging.

In 1995, Weymouth did just that. But the state was focused on building a Route 3 ramp to the soon-to-be-closed South Weymouth Naval Air Station – a ramp that never materialized.

The state widened all of the intersections along Route 18 in the early 2000s, and planned to start the road widening in 2008. A decade later, the work is finally set to begin.

Throughout the project, one lane of traffic will be maintained in each direction on Route 18, and vehicles will travel over a temporary span while the 82-year-old bridge over the MBTA commuter rail tracks is replaced.

Laniewski, the Factory Paint manager, said the business is considering downsizing from its 40,000-square-foot building to another location in Weymouth that is on the market.

“Our biggest concern is traffic and the loss of business, because customers may not want to travel through construction and will go to Lowes or Home Depot instead,” she said. “Another concern is how close the construction will be to the building and the potential for damage.”

During three off-peak weekends, traffic on Route 18 will be detoured onto Pond Street, and buses will replace trains on the Kingston/Plymouth commuter rail line so crews can slide the new bridge superstructure onto the final bridge supports.

Patrick Marvin, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the land acquisition process for the project is complete. While the state has not released a detailed timeline, the project is expected to be finished in 2022. The state is putting incentive and disincentive language in the contract to ensure the contractors reach project milestones on time.

James Feeney lives on Clarendon Street in a neighborhood between Route 18 and Pond Street, near Union Point. He said he’s noticed that traffic has increased on the stretch of Route 18 heading toward Route 139.

“I’m glad they’re widening the road all the way down to Abington, because the traffic on that section is getting really bad,” he said.

Feeney said the state plans to use his land for equipment storage during construction, and he’s been waiting for the work to start since he received the money for it last fall.

“This all started about five or six years ago, so we’ve been ready and waiting,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of concerns about it, because it’s definitely needed.”

Feeney said he was against an early proposal that would have closed the bridge for an extended period and detoured traffic down Pond Street. In 1982, the state shut down a section of Route 18 to repair the bridge, sending an estimated 34,000 vehicles onto Pond Street each day, according to Ledger archives. Feeney said the added traffic caused a slew of problems on Pond Street, including water main breaks and potholes.

The project has long been touted as a way to support economic development along Route 18 and the surrounding area, including the development of the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station in Weymouth, Abington and Rockland.

But Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund acknowledged that many existing businesses are stressed about how the construction will affect their customers, parking availability and their bottom lines.

“All the businesses are worried, but there’s really nothing we can do about it, because this is what comes with the project,” Hedlund said.

Tom Layman, a spokesman for South Shore Hospital, said the project is “nothing that’s a surprise to us,” and that hospital officials are in regular contact with the state and town regarding how the hospital will be affected.

“We are expecting increased traffic on side streets near our hospital – such as Columbian Street and Fogg Road – as motorists look for alternate routes to avoid construction,” Layman said. “Our No. 1 priority is to ensure ambulances are able to arrive and depart from our hospital without delay.”

Scheduled to lose 7 feet of his frontage for the project, Charlie Wilson of Uncle Charlie’s Finer Diner said he’s somewhat concerned about his front door being so close to the road.

“We’ll be a little tight, and the front is where people come in and out,” he said.

Wilson said he also wished the state would communicate with businesses more now that the project is moving ahead.

On the positive side, Wilson said he’s glad that the state is investing in the infrastructure in light of the ongoing development at Union Point, the former naval air base.

“I’ve been here 30 years, and every year there’s an increase in traffic,” he said. “There’s always been some traffic, but nothing like now. The area is growing like the rest of the South Shore.”